


and now I just sit in silence

by PIRANHA



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Life Day (Star Wars), Light Angst, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, QuiObiDiscordSecretSanta2020, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PIRANHA/pseuds/PIRANHA
Summary: Qui-Gon hadn’t spoken today.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48
Collections: Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan Discord Server Secret Santa (2020)





	and now I just sit in silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tessiete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/gifts).



> For Tess, and the QuiObi Server Secret Santa:  
> “Please may I have something obi-Whump! With qui-Angst! Obi-Wan spends Life Day recovering from an illness/injury and Qui-Gon has revelations.”
> 
> I haven’t written in over a literal decade. This is entirely unbeta-ed. Please forgive me.  
> ♥

The Temple held a chill some mornings.

Qui-Gon flexed his bare feet against the stone floor and allowed a moment to appreciate the shock of coolness meeting his still warm skin. He stretched smoothly, both in habit and in pleasant leisure, and took in a calm breath—filling his lungs full of the crisp air—and held it.

It would be easy to slide back into the blankets and allow the morning to drift late, to give himself a day’s full rest. A tempting prospect considering the rarity of true downtime. 

This was not a mission and there was no hurry. They were home.

He pushed the air out of his lungs. Tea would do them well. A spiced green perhaps, to warm the mind and body alike, and to fit the festive air that Qui-Gon knew would be filling the Temple halls. They had returned late in the evening, too late to notice decorations, too tired, too filmed of space grime, too— 

The blinds to the main room had automatically lifted to let in the rise of Coruscant’s single sun. Qui-Gon did his best to live by the planet’s natural rhythm as allowed within his schedule; even crushed under the layers of durasteel and permacrete, it pulsed onwards and permeated into the Force. His padawan, he had realized early into the apprenticeship, required more than the shifting of stars to rouse for the day.

He moved their, rather kitschy, kettle—Tahl had gifted it to them both with an amused smile—that whistled to announce the boiling water and, more importantly, an effective alarm chrono. It matched their collected clutter more than Qui-Gon was willing to admit.

Their rooms didn’t afford a large amount of space, much of their cabinet shelves had been allocated towards tea over more general cookware. This problem was one which they both shared, which meant it wasn’t truly a problem at all. Qui-Gon shifted a carafe of milky, titania plant water to reach the pair of yunomi cups behind. They would leech enough of the water’s heat to warm the ceramic and not burn the delicate green. 

He filled small brewing bags with the tea and set them inside, moving the cups to the nearby low table. The string of pearls had taken advantage of their absence and Qui-Gon gently adjusted the long vines back to its own area.  
The morning’s golden hour was beginning to cast lines across the sitting space. Obi-Wan’s stack of spare, woven blankets had been washed and folded, it seemed. On top, a small box was neatly wrapped in brown paper with Qui-Gon’s name written in precise lettering. 

His brow furrowed; he didn’t remember it last night, but it had to have been.

It did not take long for the kettle to sound sharply, harsh in the quiet of the morning, but the Jedi master left it for a time longer before retrieval. 

Qui-Gon filled their cups and sat comfortably on one of the floor cushions to wait for the still sleep-mussed young man to shuffle out and half lay upon the tabletop, cheek pressed to the warmth of the brewing tea. 

Obi-Wan did not come. 

\---

Kortan IV had been a disaster.

The local healers had told Qui-Gon that his padawan would be fine, all the while emphatically insisting that he be seen to by the Jedi Temple with an urgency that belied the reassurances.

Obi-Wan had been quietly, as he always tended to be, hopeful they would be back in time for Life day and as Qui-Gon stared at the second steaming cup, he grimly supposed he had gotten his wish.

Obi-Wan would have supposed it more wryly, eyes crinkled upwards in his softly mischievous humor.

The Temple healers had told Qui-Gon the physical wounds wouldn’t even scar, multitasking as they’d dropped his padawan in the tank of bacta. Neither of them were fond of the tanks and now, this time, after Obi-Wan had been held in that cell of rising water, hunched over only able to watch it meter upwards, he’d—they’d moved him to another— 

Qui-Gon had been shooed out before he’d even managed to sit in a chair and shooed out a second time at the door after returning from the sonic.

He breathed in the smell of their fresh tea, finished brewing now, and held it. Nearby the sitting table, usually half-stashed under the full couch, they kept a small collection: datapads, overdue library records, Garen’s lost comlink, a small holoprojector, and Qui-Gon’s journal of paper.

Poetry was a personal therapy as much as a hobby. He didn’t consider himself particularly adept at writing, but it afforded him a measure of satisfaction. Turning to the first unused page, Qui-Gon smoothed a hand over pressed fiber and breathed out.

\---

The kettle was long cold and their tea astringent. He wished for one of the blankets, but the wrapped box sat unobtrusively atop the stack. 

Qui-Gon’s attention focused back to the paper before him and, without contentment, inked the date at the bottom of the blank page.

He rose to change his tunics and unbraid his hair. 

He would not be shooed a third time.

\--- 

The afternoon shift had told Qui-Gon that his padawan was fine, flesh knit back together and sedatives metabolized out, but refused to pull him until he naturally awoke. The mind knows best, she insisted. The bond between them lay dormant. It was different than sleep somehow, though Qui-Gon would be at a loss to describe it. 

He found the chair and pulled it close enough to lean against the curved, transparent surface of the tank, hands folded together inside the sleeves of his robe. Qui-Gon avoided the slide into meditation and sat.

The equipment had a soft hum, only noticeable in the quiet; Obi-Wan was the only tank active. The cloying sweetness of the bacta had long permeated into the walls of the section and there was no escape from the Pavlovian wrongness it evoked. Qui-Gon’s breath was shallow, and there was no way to hold it for long. The healer returned occasionally to check the monitoring screens, never saying a word to the Jedi master pressed as close as possible to his padawan. 

It was starkly silent. Qui-Gon could hear himself breathe. For the first time in seven years, his mind was left to itself.

They hadn’t decorated this area. They hadn’t decorated their rooms. He hadn’t spoken today. He hadn’t even written— 

The flick was noiseless, sharp inside his head, and Qui-Gon startled. Obi-Wan stared back, eyebrows raised enough to give away the fond exasperation despite the oxygen mask hiding most of his face.

\---

His padawan listed into him, still lethargic, as he took in the two over-steeped cups of tea and blank page of paper left on the table. He knew Obi-Wan had noticed the untouched box when he felt his light huff of air.

“Master,” Obi-Wan sighed, “You wouldn’t have kept living in that moment if you would live for the future on occasion.”

Qui-Gon wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him, tucking his nose into Obi-Wan’s hair to inhale his clean scent. 

They would still be home tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> (Obi-Wan gave him more teacups, by the way.)
> 
> car radio - twenty-one pilots


End file.
